Steve's presentation at ICCC 2009

I shared a panel with Steve McIntyre at ICCC 2009, and he made his presentation publicly available. I’m providing the link here for anyone interested. If you don’t have PowerPoint 2007 on your PC, a free viewer is available here.

There are also Office 2007 file compatibility updates for older versions of Office/PowerPoint available here.

Steve covers much of his work on Climate Audit and his deconstruction of Mannian methodology in the presentation. Regular CA readers will find some familiar things in it.

Steve McIntyre – Do We Know that the 1990s Were the Warmest Decade of the Millennium?

93 Comments

Could one suggest saving this interesting presentation as a pdf? Doubtless to the great distress of MS Office Product Management, it turns out that these files unaccountably do not display properly in Open Office….

Joe. I haven’t made it available yet. I use a special software for broadcast presentation, and it is not PowerPoint compatible in any way. If I posted it, it would cause more trouble than it is worth. I’m working on getting a series of HTML slides ready.

I’ve had other things to do since my return from NYC, like see my 3 yr old daughter through eye surgery and make up for lost time at work, and get CA’s new server configured and ordered. Maybe later this weekend.

Re: Anthony Watts (#34), thank you very much for the work you do. Hope the surgery goes well. Looking forward seeing your presentation as well (I would have come to the conference, but I teach MWF this semester).

Great stuff. Could you could also post a video (or at least an audio) of the actual presentation? It would help explain some of the slides that are not fully self-explanatory.

If there was no taping, any chance you could repeat the presentation in front of a camera and post it to youtube? I know you’re busy but in this age of video it would be great to be able to send a youtube link to people I am trying to get your work in front of. Most people are too lazy to read a .ppt but they love watching videos!

Opened fine for me using Apple’s new Keynote program on my Mac. I receive .docx files from time to time and have never been able to open them with MS Word, but will try using Apple’s word processing program Pages.

I think Steve McIntyre is a ‘God’ in terms of presenting so much great scientific and statistical logic in the case for a rational view of the climate. However, a review of his presentation indicates that his communications skills are unfortunately limited. Below are just some examples:

I am a native English speaker and a scientist, but I struggle to follow much of the text. I think the science is superb, but the communicaton abilities severely lacking. Steve, please bare this in mind, or if you cannot address the issue, make sure you use good communicators (such as McKitrick) to assist in your work. (of course this is said without hearing your presentation in person, which may have been much better.)

The examples (such text will be useles to any kind of audience, however academic):
“The McIntyre and McKitrick 2005a,b criticism [relating to the extraction of the dominant modes of variability present in a network of western North American tree ring chrono-logies, using Principal Components Analysis]”

“A cardinal rule of statistical inference is that the method of analysis must be decided before looking at the data. The rules and strategy of analysis cannot be changed in order to obtain the desired result. Such a strategy carries no statistical integrity and cannot be used as a basis for drawing sound inferential conclusions.”

There are many suggestions I could make to help the PowerPoint presentation stand on its own, but unfortunately, I have run out of space in the margin.

All kidding aside, the I think Steve is using the slides to show the thing he is talking about when he talks to an audience rather than using them to communicate the main point to the wider world.

Unfortunately, the slides contain a lot of quotations and readers familiar with Steve’s work can weave them in the intended way. I am going to send more specific recommendations to Steve later and I am sure he would appreciate specific points raised by his readers here but keep in mind that he is going to be away for a while.

I am a native English speaker and a scientist, but I struggle to follow much of the text. I think the science is superb, but the communicaton abilities severely lacking. Steve, please bare this in mind

At least I state I am not expert in anything except making many typos.

Look, I’m nearly 70, have a machine several years old and was able to work around to Steve’s presentation in a few minutes. How about you guys and gals polish up your skills before posting complaints?

I’ve heard Steve live and it’s np prob. He’s not lived with Eskimos to the point of unintelligible contamination. What a mob of whingers we have on this thread.

Jeff, as far as the scientists in Copenhagen are concerned, maybe you’d like to take a look at a guest post by Mike Hulme on Roger Pielke,Jr.’s site about that declaration by “almost 2000 climate scientists”.

Sinan Unur, # 17 — Thanks for the pdf link. File formats are a real issue even within Office. I sometimes have to give people presentations to take with them on media for presentation at conferences, and unfortunately, pdf is just about the only way to be sure your guy’s material is going to play on the conference venue machinery.

Nice succinct presentation. Didn’t quite get the point about the tree stumps though, slide 34. Is there a quote missing on slide 9? It seems like Mann should go on and say something, but if so, either its on a subsequent slide or its been left off?

“…whatever Mann did, not mentioning data that contradict your views is a normal thing to do in science. Scientists are just people, and they want to score. If you want to tackle them, if you think you know better, it is up to you to point out the contradictions to your opponents. That’s life, that’s science. It is not a sin defending your own interest, even if that implies being somewhat dishonest”.

The article attacks McIntyre and Crok. Apparently, this ‘skeptic’ considers dishonesty in science the right thing to do, even when that science is funded with taxpayers’ money. I believe that there are a lot of people out there who hold this kind of opinions concerning dishonesty in science.

“…whatever Mann did, not mentioning data that contradict your views is a normal thing to do in science. Scientists are just people, and they want to score. If you want to tackle them, if you think you know better, it is up to you to point out the contradictions to your opponents. That’s life, that’s science. It is not a sin defending your own interest, even if that implies being somewhat dishonest”.

Sorry , but no real scientist would ever publish knowingly wrong or manipulated data, nor would they hide existing data contradicting new interpretations. It is not only that it is not ethical, but the consequences of being caught in a lie are very serious. Even the ridicule that comes from unintended lies is very serious for a scientist’s career and reputation.

The lie/ deception in this case was the occurrence of a “BACKTO_1400-CENSORED” folder found on Mann’s FTP. In this folder “were the results of the calculation of the NOAMER PC’s without using the bristlecone pine series, giving a higher NH temperature in the 15th century.” The strange email exchange Crok had with Mann can be found here:http://www.natutech.nl/00/nt/nl/49/nieuws/2299/index.html

Re: anna v (#66), “Sorry , but no real scientist would ever publish knowingly wrong or manipulated data, nor would they hide existing data contradicting new interpretations. It is not only that it is not ethical, but the consequences of being caught in a lie are very serious. Even the ridicule that comes from unintended lies is very serious for a scientist’s career and reputation.”

…unless, of course, the issue was really, really important, and “there are no excuses for inaction” — and the whole industry of climate change research rests upon public consumption of the myth…well then, some exaggeration would be understandable, some glossing of the “truth” in a movie, for example, might be necessary and if that still fails, well, one might create virtual data to fill any pesky voids that actual empirical science and causal theory might normally supply, except that in this instance, they don’t…then, of course, some deviance from the high road might become the norm, people might not ask uncomfortable questions, researchers might cite each others papers, even use each others data series and reinforce the consensus the really important issue needs to exist….

No couldn’t happen. You’re right. The peer-review process and norms of academia would sniff that fraud and impose censure like a ton of bricks.

But, if that had been the case, we wouldn’t have the blogosphere populated by Climate Audit, WUWT or any of the myriad of other fine, blogs that provide the means by which to challenge and question the Orwellian world of climate science politics and its evolution in practice over the past decade.

What really frightens the academic community about the Heartland Conference, the blogs and the whole climate issue is the knowledge that if that same audit and scrutiny was applied across the board the vast majority of funded research would be revealed as being (variously) arcane, mundane, obvious, ideologically deterministic, unsubstantiated by empirical data, speculative, self-serving, manipulative and/or “creative” in its use of methods, data analysis and findings.

The problem with politicized science is that it exhibits all of these failings. But it remains funded and peer-reviewed. Far from inhibiting a career, it appears one can assume a role of considerable status as a political advisor by embracing the correct politicized science.

Checked in briefly from Bangkok – no time to chat right now. My speaking notes are here. Speaking Notes here My PPT style is to use the PPT for graphics and quotes and I seldom simply say the thing as is on the PPT slide.

Re: Steve McIntyre (#41), The complaints in this thread about the presentation have been a bit over the top. A good presenter just doesn’t simply read back the slide content. The slide should be viewed in combination with an articulate presentation – more to illustrate significant points with graphical material and to summarise critical points. I think judgements would be best made once the speaking points and the presentation are viewed in combination. Anthony made a big effort to get the slides up here ASAP – let’s be patient! Thanks Anthony and Steve for getting the slides and notes up so quickly while you’re on the road.

Re: Steve McIntyre (#41), Steve, could you send me your email address so that I can contact you direct about one or two things. I am giving a series of lectures on climate change at the moment and find your work indispensable when trying to give a balanced and analytical viewpoint rather than the hysterical approach adopted elsewhere. Thanks

Thanks for all of the interest in the YouTube version of Steve’s presentation.

For some reason, YouTube cut off the last page of the presentation in the video. It was in the original upload. Since it contained the link back to Climate Audit I thought it was important that it be included.

I have posted a better version. I also tried to make page 9 more readable

Criticizing his speaking notes? Puleeeze people. I was there and he was superb. My speaking notes consist of….nothing. I just use my slides to remind me. If you only had my slides you would be baffled. It is a TALK not a paper. Auditing can go too far you know. Regarding the dutch fellow who said scientists quote the work that supports them and it is up to others to quibble…not so. See Feynman quotes last week or so. In the discussion section, at least in my field, one is required to cite contrary work and reconcile the divergences (so to speak!).

In the discussion section, at least in my field, one is required to cite contrary work and reconcile the divergences (so to speak!).

Just curious. Do the editors in the journals in which you publish really adhere to that requirement? That is a fairly restrictive (and fair) requirement! Maybe Nature and Science needs to look at other scientific journals for guidance?

Re: jae (#58), The journals I am referring to are Ecology, American Naturalist, Oikos, Forest Ecology & Management, Ecological Modelling, etc. It is the REVIEWERS who insist that one deal with contradictions and competing theories in the literature, and they usually supply a list of key papers one has missed (if you have). When I see the IPCC simply ignore publications it doesn’t like…well, I can’t get away with that even when it is an accident.

Very nice work be Steve M. Some of it is familiar, but I was struck by the question: how important is it? My answer is: incredibly important.
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The quotes from Schmidt and Connolley are quite bizarre, though possibly encouraging, as it might suggest that, deep down, they have very little faith in the Hockey Stick.
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If the Hockey Stick is wrong then the IPCC claim that 20th century temperatures were ‘unprecedented’ falls. It would then mean that the 20th century warming was quite likely natural, as it simply followed the natural pattern of a warming period occurring roughly every thousand years (the MWP, the Roman Period and the so-called Minoan Warm Period). If natural, the current warming would reach a peak and then go into reverse. This may be already happening, but we probably can’t be certain for quite a few years yet.
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I believe the Hockey Stick is the strongest argument the AGW crowd have. Ordinary people probably won’t be too impressed by climate models (they’re just computer programs, after all, and they are incapable of predicting future climate), or by the claimed ‘consensus’. But if the Hockey Stick could be proven beyond all doubt, then even I, a convinced sceptic, would have second thoughts. It would be circumstancial evidence and as such probably wouldn’t hold up in a court of law, but nevertheless it would be very convincing.
For this reason I believe the work of McIntyre and McKitrick is of extraordinary importance. Now we know how bad much of the underlying science is. If the science is bad then quite likely it is wrong as well. It’s very sad to see climate science corrupted by politics and money, but I’m confident that in the long run the science will get closer to the truth. When this happens, hopefully in my lifetime, then I’m sure M&M should take much of the credit.
Chris

…whatever Mann did, not mentioning data that contradict your views is a normal thing to do in science. Scientists are just people, and they want to score.

On the one side who wouldn’t like to score? On the other side – knowing that there are data that do not support my recent pet theory is very nagging feeling, at least for me. Is that because there’s something I’ve missed due to my use of a different method or approach? Is it possible that they made a mistake? Is is possible that I made a mistake? Is there a possibility we both have missed something that is necessary for getting the whole image?

Quibbles, quibbles. There seem to be a number of grouches on this site. Steve McIntyre deserves accolades and applause. It is the determined, detailed work of checking the validity of the research and the veracity of the so-called climate gurus that is immensely important. This is the kind of work that will bring sanity to our world. Thanks, Steve, for the clear presentation and for your efforts to bring the relevant issues to the IPCC.

Steve, you really ought to let readers comment on Sudden Climate Change Syndrome. And there you go again with questionable science.

No, it was neither the 11-hour time difference nor the jet lag of a 24-hour flight that drove your fatigue. This is yet another flat-earther, head-stuck-in-the-sand explanation. There are models that show travel fatigue is indeed caused by Sudden Climate Change Syndrome. The correlation between physiological fatigue and Sudden Climate Change is 0.99. The debate is over – really.
This has been confirmed by a recent ground-breaking peer-reviewed study conducted by real scientists who studied 1347 long distance fliers who flew between points with great climate differences. Shockingly, all fliers studied showed fatigue, ranging from modest to extreme. The authors say the fatigue was attributable solely to sudden climate difference, and nothing else. The fingerprint could not have been clearer!

The study goes on to say that unless we all stop these CO2-producing global flights, we should all expect this phenomena to increasingly dog travelers in the future. Pilots and attendants will be hit hardest, and thus will adversely impact air travel safety and put millions of travelers at risk.

I’ll provide a link to this groundbreaking study as soon as I find it. 😉

You show the work of Lonnie Thompson about glaciers in Peru and from another location.

I know the work of the swiss scientists about the alps. Many glaciers had to be examined before one could say that the during the MWP the glaciers retreated the same way than in 2006-7.

Many peaces of trees have been found, that were much older than the MWP. That doesen’t mean that the glaciers didn’t retreat to the same height during the MWP. Trees need some years to grow and I am convinced that no trees have grown yet at those locations.

Lets admit a very impropable thing, that this modern warmperiod is over: Nobody would find trees or other plants in 1000 years at the actual location, where these trees have been found.

Only by chance peaces of wood have been found in the alps. People are working there the whole year.

If the MWP happened from the alps to Greenland, in Chile and China, and if it has a strong correlation with the activity of the sun, there are climate mechanisms that we don’t understand, even if the last 15 years should be the warmest period since the holocene optimum.

To me the most convincing evidence that most of the warming during the 20th century was unnatural is not Mann’s “hockey stick” but rather the “spaghetti plots” that show Mann’s results together with many others. As you point out in your ICCC talk, the other studies are not independent of Mann because they have pretty much the same input data. Nevertheless they employ different assumptions in processing that data. Accordingly I have been impressed that despite wide variation, the curves plotted in NAS / NRC 2006 and IPCC 2007 consistently indicate that 20th century warming was unusual in the context of the last 500 – 1000 years.

I was very interested in your ICCC slide claiming that the above result is not actually robust, i.e. that the precedence of the MWP vs. late 20th century can be reversed with minor changes to input assumptions. Can you provide CA readers with some details and / or point us to a reference?

Accordingly I have been impressed that despite wide variation, the curves plotted in NAS / NRC 2006 and IPCC 2007 consistently indicate that 20th century warming was unusual in the context of the last 500 – 1000 years.

Re: Curt Covey (#80), There have been long discussions at CA about how dropping bristlecones or Yamal or one other series completely eliminates the hockey stick shape. When I left out tree rings altogether the MWP reappeared. This is covered nicely in my talk at NY and in Steve’s talk there. The videos should be up within a week.

Curt, I am really glad you are here. Please forgive the guys if it sounds like they are a little hard on you. Many of the regulars here have been through all this stuff for a long time. Craig Loehle got so fed up with tree rings he published a temp reconstruction without trees.

I am not certain what information you had a chance to review. Did you see both the slides and the speaking notes? I think it is helpful to see both together. Jeff Id put it on his blog and so did Anthony Watts. I’m not sure why neither of these URLs are listed in the top post.

You requested a reference showing that minor changes to the data series used would reverse the hockey stick. I believe Steve has submitted such a paper on a couple of occasions. However, journal editors seem to have a habit of tapping members of the Hockey Team to review the paper and it has not been published. As far as I know Steve has never posted a submitted paper online because he does not want the journal to say it is was previously published and therefore not original research. But I believe Steve has, here on CA, shown problems with all the papers illustrated in the spaghetti graph. He is quite open with his code to make it easy for readers here to verify his work. You can use the search function in the upper right of the page to search CA. I searched “Briffa 2000” and found this. I would bet you could repeat that procedure for every paper in the spaghetti graph.

Re: Ron Cram (#84), thanks for the encouraging words and especially the pointer to Craig Loehle’s paper. I will have a look at it when I get back to work.

What caught my eye about Steve’s slide for the ICCC was that it seems to take on not just one or two paleo-reconstructions but all 12 shown in Figure 10.6(b) of the IPCC 2007 Working Group 1 report. The key question in my mind is: do all of them (not just Briffa’s and Mann’s) have a common error?

One of the most obvious errors is the inclusion of the Bristlecone Pine Series. According to Steve’s slide 26 (from the Wegman Report), all but three of them included bcps. Strip bark trees are not symmetrical and so you can get vastly different info from two cores just six inches away on the same tree. Strip bark trees are not a reliable proxy for anything. Even the NAS panel said strip bark tree data should be avoided in temp reconstructions, but they keep using it. The three that do not use bcps have other problems. I am not the right person to summarize the other issues. Perhaps someone else wants to explain. Craig? bender?

Re: Curt Covey (#80), A scientist who assigns causality from a statistical correlation. I’d be stunned with disbelief if that failing were not so widespread among climate scientists. That the statistical inference: 1. has no basis in scientific theory, and; 2. is not even wrong, turns a mistake into professional negligence.

just checking in quickly. I’ll be back online in about 2-3 days. The “common error” is nothing more than data snooping/data mining. 9 of 12 spaghetti studies have Graybill bristlecone chronologies – despite caveats against interpreting the 20th century growth pulse as anything to do with temperature. But scientists in the field know that these have a HS shape. Most so-called “proxies” are little more than noise. If you mix a HS with a number of white noise/low order red noise, the noise cancels out; all the so-called different methods re-inflate the amplitude of the composite so that the std deviation matches the std deviation of temperature. Thus they get the HS-shape of the bristlecones back.

The bristlecone addiction is made worse by Ababneh’s total failure to replicate Graybill’s results at Sheep Mt. IMO Graybill’s (admitted) bias towards strip bark trees made his results pretty questionable. Until Abaneh and Graybill are reconciled, all recons using Graybill chronologies should be cordoned off – this is over and above the other issues.

As I observe in my notes, there are 3 studies that don’t use bristlecones, but each of the use Briffa’s Yamal chronology, which he substituted for the Polar Urals series. Merely using the Polar Urals update instead of Yamal reverses these results.

These results have been discussed in many threads. The point would be worth writing up in a more formal article and Ross has urged me to do so for some time. Also look for our supplementary presentation to the NAS panel for an example of “apple picking” as opposed to “cherry picking”.

My approach to these questions differs somewhat from Craig Loehle’s, as I have not ventured to present my “own” reconstruction as I think that any such presentation would, with present information, be subject to the same criticisms as I apply to others. I view Loehle’s article as being a sort of sensitivity study on Moberg et al, with both studies being vulnerable to the same sorts of criticism.

I limit my statements to the observation that trivial variations lead to different results.

Steve, glad to have you stop in! I hope your vacation is wonderful. We look forward to having you back. Thank you for straightening me out that you have not submitted a paper on this topic yet. I thought you had.

Also, I have a few questions but they can wait a few days till you get back.

Regarding Briffa’s Yamal chronology, I do not see Yamal listed on slide 26. Did Wegman refer to it using a different name?

Also, it appears Esper02 for Polar Urals is colored differently from the rest because it uses the Polar Urals update which indicate today is not as warm as MWP. Is that correct? But the paper still shows unprecedented warming in the 20th century because of the bcps, correct?

Let me see if I understand the role Briffa played. In 1995, Briffa published the first tree ring series without a strong MWP based on Polar Urals. The updated Polar Urals (without Briffa) shows a strong MWP. Once the Polar Urals were updated, Briffa substituted the Yamal chronology and the MWP disappeared again. Briffa’s Tornetrask series does not show MWP and was used in all the IPCC spaghetti graphs. The updated Tornetrask (without Briffa) shows a strong MWP, but has been neglected by the IPCC. I am sure I am leaving out some interesting info, like the data deletions, but is that the gist of Briffa’s “contributions?”

the other studies are not independent of Mann because they have pretty much the same input data

Correct. But what is the one data ingredient that they all share? It is the flawed tree-ring proxies that show an uptick in the early 20th century, up to the 1980s, yet DIVERGE from this trend in the last 30 years. That these proxy-based reconstructions do not use the most up-to-date proxies is poor science, possibly bordering on dishonest. Yes, you heard correctly.

If you were not already aware of this fact, well, I find that shocking. It means you need to search this blog for these phrases:
“update the proxies”
“bristlecone”
“divergence”
“positive and negative responders”
“MWP megadrought”

and read and read and read wherever the links take you …

Trust me on this: you will want to read this story before expressing any opinion in public.

I found the plenary talks by Vaclav Klaus, Richard Lindzen, Lawrence Solomon, Willie Soon, and John Sununu to be particularly interesting. Klaus’s first name, BTW, is “Vah-tslaf”, not “Vah-klav” as in his introduction.

While I agreed with much of what Christopher Monckton had to say, reducing opponents to “bed-wetters” is not exactly mature political dialog.